


Memory

by Alabaster86



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 12:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5744239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alabaster86/pseuds/Alabaster86
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bunch of drabbles featuring various characters, inspired by the prompt 'memory',</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory

**World of Two**

Sometimes, Aang wished that Appa could talk. It wasn't that the Avatar was lonely; he had friends, amazing friends, some of whom talked _too_ much, and he had Katara, the sparkling centre of his universe.

But none of them were there. None of them had memories of the air temple where he had lived and learned until the age of twelve. None of them could recall the pure and simple joy of his first time in the air. None of them could recall the pain he felt that black and stormy day he left and altered his destiny forever. But Appa could.

"Hey, buddy," Aang cried with delight when he approached the massive air bison. "I've got a treat for you."

Appa snorted gently in reply and inhaled the apple that his companion held out in the palm of his hand.

"Good, huh?" Aang asked and bit into his own crunchy red fruit.

The great beast blew air softly out of his nostrils. It tickled Aang and the boy giggled like a small child, innocently and unselfconsciously. He rubbed the bison's nose, and stretched up as far as he could to scratch the wide expanse of white fur.

"You understand me, don't you, buddy?" the Avatar asked.

Appa bellowed, a loud, booming sound that echoed throughout the spacious shelter that Fire Lord Zuko had requisitioned especially for him. Though Aang was dressed in traditional monk's robes, yellow and flowing, Appa still saw the little boy with the yellow pants and orange leggings, air glider in his hand and wide grey eyes filled with the joy of living.

Sometimes, Appa wished that Aang could talk.

* * *

 

**Love Rekindled**

It was the necklace that did it. When Pakku saw it there on the ice, dark blue ribbon stretched out and the stone he had carved sixty years before looking exactly as it had then, he remembered Kanna. The recollection was sharp and painful. He saw the anger and defiance in those beautiful eyes of hers, and he saw the pain. But he also saw the giggling young girl, full of energy and mischief, walking with her friends along the intricate series of canals, flirting with boys they shouldn't have been flirting with.

Kanna was supposed to be his. She would have been, but fled both him and the Northern Water Tribe, desperate to find a home, a family of people that wouldn't force her into a box. He could not understand her decision and he was angry for years, never giving his love to another. Some called him embittered, some called him an old grouch, some called him worse. Not once during those sixty years did Pakku entertain the thought that maybe Kanna had a point.

Tradition was all. Tradition should not be broken, ever. It was Kanna's granddaughter, Katara, that marvelously gifted waterbender, who did it. She changed his mind or opened it up to new possibilities.

Yes, it was her and the necklace and the memories it dredged up from deep, deep down. That strip of blue made Pakku realize that tradition might not be everything after all. It made him realize how very much he still missed Kanna.

* * *

 

**Sometimes, memories are all we have**

Jet watched as the light glided along on its metal track. He knew what the Dai Li wanted to do. They wanted to brainwash him. They wanted to turn him into another puppet that never questioned anything and believed that the war was nothing but an elaborate story dreamed up by some madman.

He resisted, but it was so very hard. Jet felt little pieces of his memory slipping away. He reached out as if to snatch them back but the bindings on his wrists only tightened.

The light was very orange and very bright. He tried to close his eyes but his lids didn't want to move. He shouted about firebenders but they only clamped his mouth shut with more of those rocks. Jet was powerless and terrified.

What if they took away _all_ his memories? What if he didn't know who he was any longer? What if he couldn't recall his mother's face or his father's voice? What if he forgot that day, the day the firebenders torched his village, killing everyone but him? What would be the point? What would he have to live for?

Some people might ask why he would _want_ to remember such a terrible thing. Jet wanted to remember because those memories were his. They were his only link to a happier time and they were what drove his thirst for revenge. Without them, he might as well be dead.

* * *

 

**The Earth Remembers Everything**

When she was old and tired and thought back on her life, Toph discovered that all her memories were somehow filtered through the earth. Her first meeting with those who would become her lifelong friends she always recalled as a long, shuddering tremor that moved from beneath her feet and upward through her perpetually small frame. She still felt those tremors anytime one of those special people was near.

Iroh's death was the sensation of driving rain pounding relentlessly into the soil. Its memory came back whenever she stood outside in a downpour and enjoyed the squishy feeling of mud between her calloused toes.

Babies, she eventually had two and her friends had them in abundance, were leaves skittering across the ground, moving wherever the wind took them.

Teaching, and the recollection of certain exceptional students, was the feel of earth in her hands, malleable and pliant, yet never letting go of its own individual essence.

The memory of lovers, many and colorful, was the bouncing of little chunks of dirt along the earth's vast and varied surface. They came and they went just as quickly, but the earthbender enjoyed every lover equally, whether fickle or steadfast.

When Aang died, such a peaceful death it was, Toph felt rumbling and shaking beneath the earth's surface. It was as though the world itself was grief stricken at the loss of the still happy-go-lucky Avatar. Whenever she visited the Fire Nation and its myriad of volcanoes, lava boiling and heaving, ready to spurt upwards like her own hot and painful tears often did, Toph thought of her grief, the grief of the people she loved and the grief of the earth itself.

* * *

 

**Memory is Fragile**

Hakoda had many memories of his wife, Kya, dead at the hands of Fire Nation raiders years ago. All of them were good, even those memories of angrily exchanged words or nights spent sleeping with their backs turned to each other, not touching. Every remembered word or look was a tiny piece of the huge, jumbled puzzle that made up Kya's image in his mind.

Sometimes when he was talking with Bato, or one of the other Southern Water Tribe men, about the old days, a memory would slip from Hakoda's grasp. A real sense of panic would flood him, more fear than when he confronted the enemy.

" _What_ did Kya say when we wrestled with that tigerseal?" he would ask shrilly.

"Oh, don't you remember; she said, 'Shouldn't you two little boys be out fishing? Or should I send Sokka out?' Then she giggled like a little kid herself."

"That's right!" Hakoda exclaimed. "I remember now."

He let out his breath and put the puzzle piece back into place.

Sometimes, a memory changed and softened. A particularly difficult day in their relationship became just a minor tiff. Hakoda figured that was the affect of time. Things always looked different through the distance of years. The raw panic he felt when Kya struggled with the birth of their son, when blood soaked through layer after layer of skins, was now nothing but faint unease.

One memory never changed, however. How he wished that it would.

* * *

 

**Brothers**

"Why do you persist in coming here?" Ozai asked from the corner of his cell.

The stone there was worn, smoothed from the constant pressure of Ozai's frame dressed in its prison rags. There was a worry trail along the centre of the cell as well. The former Fire Lord did a lot of pacing.

"I don't make any special trips, you know, brother. I'm here to see Zuko and Mai. Sometimes curiosity gets the better of me _."_

"Curiosity about what?" Ozai snarled as he snapped his head up, sending his long lank hair flying.

"About what made you _you_ , I suppose," Iroh answered. "About the choices you made and whether you feel any regret."

The owner of Ba Sing Se's most successful tea shop looked thoughtfully at his fallen sibling. He stroked his long beard and settled down more comfortably onto his little wooden stool. Iroh borrowed it from the guard outside every time he visited. He tended to stay for quite a while.

"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard," Ozai retorted.

His face twisted into a hideous scowl while Iroh maintained his calm expression.

"Why?" the tea maker asked.

"I've done nothing to regret except get defeated. I stand by all my choices. No, I take that back. I should have been harsher and crueler. We come from the same parents, brother. Don't think that there isn't a little bit of me in you."

"Oh, I _know_ that there is," Iroh agreed. "But I chose a different path many years ago. I opened my mind, Ozai. Yours has been closed since you were a small boy."

"And what do you know of when I was a boy?" Ozai yelled. He stood up quickly and moved to the bars of his cage, pressing his face against the cold steel. "You were never there."

"That's not quite true," Iroh replied. His voice was soft and soothing and his one hand moved outward as if he wanted to touch his brother. "I have memories of when you were born. It was strange to have a little brother when I was already an adult but I liked the idea too. And you were so cute."

Ozai sneered.

"Yes, it's true. You were a cute baby and a handsome little boy. When I came home you followed me around like a lost badgerdog."

"Nonsense," Ozai replied and scowled again. "Why would I follow you around?"

"Because you were lonely; our father wasn't exactly one for giving affection."

"Loneliness is for weak people. I am not weak. I was never weak. That distinction goes to my son."

"You're wrong, Ozai; everyone feels loneliness and Zuko is far from weak. In fact, he is one of the strongest people I know or have ever known."

"We'll never agree on anything, Iroh."

"I wouldn't say that. I have lots of time."

 


End file.
